Monthly Archives: April 2014

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Blue Sargent is a cursed girl. For as long as she can remember, the psychics of Henrietta have all been in consensus: that when she kisses her true love, he will die. Blue is so used to the idea it doesn’t frighten her any more – until she sees the ghost of a boy who is yet to die, and it all becomes very real. The boy’s name is Gansey. He is a student at the elite private school of Agliony, and together with his friends, is on the trail of a fantastical discovery. When his path intersects with Blue’s, events are set in motion that will change all their lives.

I am not yet sure whether I like this book or not, and I won’t be sure until the series is complete. If it takes the direction I expect it will, I will be extremely disappointed, because ‘fate’ is an infuriating trump card that damages both plot and character. If it goes the way I hope it will, subverting the obvious rules, I will be delighted. The plot is slow-moving but well written, and there are several impressive twists that left me very interested to see what happens in book two, The Dream Thieves.

Time for a more familiar tale of witches and appalling parenting! ‘Hansel and Gretel’ is one of the usual suspects in children’s anthologies and even those who don’t read fairy tales will probably recognise the story from cultural osmosis. This version may surprise you, however. It begins when a poor woodcutter hears crying above his head and discovers a toddler trapped up a tree, having been abducted and then dropped by an overly ambitious vulture. The woodcutter rescues the girl. Taking her home and naming her Gretel, he raises her as a sister for his young son Hansel.

This philanthropic streak is short-lived. When poverty has driven the family to the brink of starvation, the woodcutter’s wife comes up with a plan: to take the children out into the wood and leave them there to live or die on their own. Her husband is horrified, but hunger overrides affection and at last he agrees. Fortunately for the children, they are lying awake that night and hear their parents planning. Gretel begins to cry, but Hansel creeps outside and fills his pockets with small white pebbles. In the morning, called to accompany his father and sister into the forest, he leaves behind a trail of stones.

The children are brought deep into the wood and left by a fire while the woodcutter goes about his work. They wait patiently, thinking they hear his axe close by, but it is in fact a trick; he has tied a stick in a tree so that it bangs about in the wind and sounds like the blows of an axe. Night falls, and he never comes back. The children have been left behind.

Hansel, however, was prepared. When the moon rises, its light catches on the trail of white pebbles and the children follow it home. Their parents welcome them – neither wishes to admit to attempted abandonment – but their mother has not given up on her plan, and the children know it. When another trip into the forest is proposed Hansel tries to collect more pebbles, but the door has been locked. Instead, he has to use precious crumbs from the small piece of bread that is expected to feed him for the day. As before, their father builds a fire and leaves them beside it. The children share Gretel’s bread and wait for moonrise to reveal the trail.

Unfortunately, it has already been found by the forest’s birds, and no trace remains. The children try to find their own way home, but are soon utterly lost. For three days they wander, slowly starving, until on the afternoon of the third day they find a cottage in the middle of the wood. To their amazement, it is edible architecture – walls of bread, a roof of cake, and windows of sugar. Not much use against the elements, but tailor-made to attract ravenous little children. Hansel and Gretel rip mouthfuls from the house, filling their stomachs for the first time in far, far too long.

While they are eating, however, a voice calls out from inside the house and the door opens. An elderly woman hobbles out on a pair of crutches. She ushers the children solicitously inside, feeding them with milk and pancakes, then tucking them into soft beds. It’s a heavenly change in circumstance, too good to be true. The old woman is of course really a witch, and not so fragile as she looks. In the early hours of the morning she carries Hansel out to a cage, then shakes Gretel awake to work in the kitchen. “Cook something good to eat,” she orders. “Your brother is shut up yonder; I shall first fatten him, and when he is fat, I think I shall eat him.”

Every day she goes out to the cage to squeeze Hansel’s hand and judge if he’s ready to eat. After several weeks he has not reached a satisfactory size, but she doesn’t want to wait any more and orders Gretel to light the oven. She then demands that the little girl climb inside to test whether it is hot enough to cook. It’s almost unbearable in the oven, but Gretel procrastinates for as long as she can, climbing in and out and declaring each time it’s not yet really hot. The witch grows suspicious and crawls inside to see for herself. Gretel seizes her chance, slamming the door shut on her and bolting it. She does not wait to hear the witch’s screams, racing out instead to free her brother.

They return inside only to strip the cottage of its valuables – the witch has a surprisingly impressive jewellery collection, and a magic wand to boot – before taking to the road. On the way they meet with a second old woman whom they recognise from experience as a wicked fairy. Cutting across the fields, they gain a headstart, but the fairy puts on magic boots that carry her miles at a step and quickly gains on them.

Gretel takes up the stolen wand. She transforms her brother into a lake and herself into a swan. The fairy tries to coax her to the lake’s edge, but Gretel remains out of reach and the fairy eventually gives up in disgust. Gretel returns herself and Hansel back into their real shapes and they continue their journey through the night.

At dawn, she transfigures herself into a rose, and Hansel sits by her playing a flute. As expected, the fairy is back on their trail. She pretends to be a harmless passerby, asking Hansel if she might pluck his rose. The speed with which he agrees is a clue to his real intent. Hansel didn’t have a flute before he raided the witch’s house.

When she has leaned deep into the hedgerow, reaching for the rose that is Gretel, Hansel plays a strange tune that forces the fairy to dance, and doesn’t stop playing until she is tangled deep amidst the hedge’s thorns. Gretel takes her own shape again, but the magic has exhausted her. “I will hasten home for help,” Hansel assures her, “and by and by we will be married.”

This is the bit where everything gets really weird, in case you couldn’t already tell.

Hansel goes away to get help and gets sidetracked with a different girl. Apparently he’s old enough for that particular type of unreliability now. Gretel waits and waits, abandoned all over again by the one person she thought she could trust. At length she transforms herself into a very melancholic daisy. A passing shepherd spies the flower and takes it home, accidentally acquiring an invisible housekeeper.

When he wakes, his home has been cleaned. When he comes home from work, his dinner is waiting. Though pleased by his good luck, he’s also a little freaked out and consults a wisewoman who lives nearby. She advises him to wake early the next day and keep watch. If anything unexpected stirs, he must throw a white cloth over it and the magic will stop. Gretel could so have used that knowledge not long ago.

The shepherd does as he is told. Seeing his daisy floating about in a very un-daisy-like way, he throws the cloth over it and discovers it is really a very houseproud girl. He asks her to marry him and she says no, at least in part because she’s still waiting on Hansel. Who’s gone off and got himself engaged to this other girl, because he’s useless.

In this kingdom it’s traditional for all the unmarried girls to go to weddings and sing. When she hears about Hansel’s betrayal, Gretel accompanies the others, and the moment he hears her voice he has an abrupt change of heart, switching brides mid-ceremony. So Gretel marries her adopted brother and never sees her traitorous adopted parents again. Yay. I’m sure she’ll be fine.

How anyone ever read this story and thought, ‘perfect for impressionable little children!’, I’m not sure. Certainly it’s changed enormously over time into a more palatable format, but you can’t really get past the core components that make this story so terrifying: parental betrayal, cannibalism, murder. There are a few short story retellings that play on those elements, including Catherynne M. Valente’s ‘A Delicate Architecture’ (from the anthology Troll’s Eye View, reprinted in To Spin a Darker Stair) and Kim Wilkins’ ‘The Forest’ (from Dreaming Again). There’s even a medieval steampunk horror movie – ‘Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’, which is…about what you might expect from the title, with a diabetic Hansel and battle-hardened Gretel handling their PTSD by executing witches. There are no daisies involved.

It’s nearly Christmas and Anita Blake is feeling anything but jolly. She may be in love with her werewolf boyfriend Richard, but she doesn’t trust him; she definitely doesn’t trust the vampire master of the city Jean-Claude, and he’s pushing hard against her boundaries. Anita could use some time away from their issues, and gets it in the form of a brand new police investigation. There’s someone – or something – on the loose with a grudge against shapeshifters. And just to complete the carnival, Death is coming to town.

This is a series that grows and changes with each instalment. The writing has a delightfully cynical edge, the world building is excellent, and while I don’t always like the situations Anita is forced into, I always like her. The series has reached the romantic triangle I was hoping it would avoid, and I dislike it every bit as much as I thought I would, but Anita’s attitude is refreshingly grumpy. Also, this book has Edward, who improves everything. ‘Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter’ began with Guilty Pleasures; the fifth book is Bloody Bones.

This Danish story, from Ruth Manning-Sanders’ collection A Book of Witches, introduces us to a family of twelve sons, eleven of whom are big, blokey types while the twelfth, Esben, is small and thin. Him being the youngest, you might not consider that too surprising, but his father and brothers treat any physical frailty like a disease they’re determined not to catch. The only member of the family who has any time for Esben is his mother, so he spends most of his time helping her in the house while the older boys work for their father in the fields.

One day, they decide to leave en masse and seek their fortunes. Losing eleven farm labourers at once is a hell of a blow to the ageing farmer, especially as they all expect to be equipped with horses for the journey, but he has done well enough to afford that, and a little extra money for the journey besides. Esben wants to go too, but the sudden departure of the farmer’s other sons hasn’t helped his youngest rise in the ranks. “If I could have kept your brothers at home and sent you away, it would have been better for me in my old age,” he declares, with withering bluntness.

Esben goes quietly into the woods and cuts himself a branch. He models it into the rough outline of a horse, and when he is satisfied with it he sings, “Fly quick, my little stick, carry me into the world.” The stick kicks off on twig legs, carrying him away in pursuit of his brothers.

They have ridden all day and by nightfall have reached a vast forest. There is only one house in sight, so that’s where they ask for shelter. Having eleven large men descend on you all at once would bother most people, I think, but the owner of this house is no ordinary old lady. She is a witch, and she has plans.

She also has thirteen daughters, who flirt cheerfully with the brothers while the witch makes supper, and then everybody goes to bed. In the same room. Which is large enough to be furnished with twenty four beds…which isn’t weird at all. The brothers, who do not seem terribly bright, go straight to sleep.

Not long afterwards, Esben arrives on his stick horse and sneaks inside. Based on an inexplicable hunch, he swaps his brothers’ nightcaps for those worn by eleven of the witch’s daughters, then hides under a bed. Soon the witch comes into the room with an axe. It’s too dark to see who occupies which bed, and to light a lamp does not suit her purposes, so she tries to guess from feel. She leaves the room believing she has beheaded her eleven guests. Thanks to Esben’s intervention, she has instead killed her own daughters.

When he is sure the witch has gone to sleep, Esben gets up and wakens his brothers, telling them to flee. They aren’t grateful, but they go, and he goes with them. In the morning they cross a river and reach a palace, where they are taken into service as stablehands. Esben, being young and little, is dismissed as useless. His brothers don’t speak up for him; the cook, however, thinks he’s funny and feeds him scraps. As a result he goes mostly unnoticed, which his brothers do not – they catch the attention of a vicious-tempered knight who, having won the king’s favour, is using it to wreck the lives of anyone he happens not to like. When the brothers refuse to defer to him, he goes to the king and tells him they know how to find a gold and silver dove. But they won’t get it unless threatened with death.

The king swallows the story effortlessly. Either the brothers give him the dove or they give him their heads. Hearing of the ultimatum, Esben wheedles himself a bag of dried peas and returns to the witch’s house on his stick horse. Sure enough, she has the bird, and he coaxes it off the roof with the peas. The moment it flutters down he stuffs it in a sack. Alerted by the rattle of his stick horse in the courtyard, the witch comes running out, calling him by name. “Was it you that made me kill my eleven daughters?” she shouts. “Yes!” Esben replies, brutally honest, and rides away before she can reach him.

The dove wins the brothers much favour with the king, and Esben none at all. The knight who stumped up the task in the first place is disgusted at how it turned out and quickly comes up with a harder goal – to produce a boar with silver and gold bristles. He really has a thing for that colour scheme. The brothers, of course, haven’t the slightest idea how to get hold of such a creature, but the king sets his heart on it and tosses out axe-related threats that end up at Esben’s ear. The boy quietly slips away, back to the witch’s cottage with a bag of malt. He uses this to entice the boar (because naturally, she has one) into a sack. He then rides away, with the witch running and shrieking behind him.

If the dove delighted the king, the boar is even better. He makes the eleven brother equerries (that is, personally responsible for the royal horses, a psychological and financial step up from stablehands). The knight who set them up is outraged. Now he has to think of something truly impossible. “If they were so minded,” he whispers to the king, “they could get you a lamp that shines over seven kingdoms.”

Despite brush-offs from his brothers, who appear to think their good fortune comes out of thin air, Esben learns of the latest task and pays yet another visit to the witch’s house, this time bringing a bushel of salt. He arrives at nightfall and climbs down the chimney so that he can search – but she, unlike his brothers, has learned from previous experience and hidden it well. At last Esben crawls into the oven to rest in concealment, and it’s a good thing he does, because the witch wakes up in the night with a craving for porridge. She sends one of her two remaining daughters to make it. Her specification is that there must be no salt in the dish, but while the girl is busy in the larder Esben sneaks out of the oven and tosses the whole bushel of salt into the pot.

Naturally, this meal does not suit the witch at all. There is no water in the house to make a second pot, so she is forced to fetch the magical lamp so that her daughter can go out to the well. Esben follows the girl, pushes her in, and takes the lamp for himself. Hearing her daughter’s screams, the witch comes running to pull her out and sees Esben disappearing on his stick horse, but all her outrage can’t bring him back.

Having completed three tasks – well, having let Esben complete them – you might think the brothers would now be safe, but quite soon the king has a passionate need for a coverlet sewn over with bells that can be heard in eight kingdoms. The witch, of course, has that in her keeping too. As soon as Esben lays a hand on it, however, the bells ring out, and she finally catches him. Showing tremendous self-restraint, she does not rip him apart on the spot; instead, she calls to her youngest daughter, and together they lock him in a dark room. There he will stay until he is fat enough to eat. To make sure he gains enough weight, she sets him a strict diet of nuts and cream, delivered by the thirteenth girl.

Despite the fact that Esben arranged the deaths of her eleven sisters and pushed the twelfth down a well, this daughter takes a liking to him. When her mother wants his finger chopped off, so that she can tell whether he’s fat enough yet, the girl wraps a nail in silk and offers that instead, buying him more time to think. In the end he has her give a roll of fat to the witch, convincing her he’s ready to be roasted, but this takes place on the night of a witches’ meeting and she must leave or be punished by her coven. She orders her daughter to prepare Esben in her stead. The girl is sad, but obedient – and Esben is cunning, tricking her into his cell and locking her there. He then runs upstairs to take the coverlet. Alerted by its ringing bells, the witch comes racing home. The sight of Esben galloping away enrages her so greatly that she…bursts into a million pieces of flint. As you do.

Esben has been away so long this time that his brothers have been imprisoned for their failure, with their executions scheduled for the next morning. So Esben takes the coverlet to the king himself, and reveals the whole story. Dismissing the slanderous knight from court, the king then offers all the brothers dukedoms, but they have finally realised what a fairweather patron he is and decide to go home to the farm instead. Piled high with gold and silver, they are welcomed home with open arms – even Esben, who only had to become a murderer and a thief to win his family’s respect.

This is a rather confronting story, one I’ve never liked. The witch is certainly a terrible person, but to be tricked into killing her own children is a brutal plot twist and Esben never shows the smallest hint of regret at what he’s done, even when the thirteenth sister treats him with such kindness. They are all capable of cruelty, youngest son and brothers, witch and daughters, king and knight. No one comes out of this one as a hero.

In the winter of 1789, Paris is a city bitter with poverty and despair. Aristocrats dance in jewelled shoes while their people starve. It is a time when one particular dealer of death is free at his work, and in one disastrous night his cards are laid down. A notorious nobleman’s unloved daughter is summoned back to a household of lies. A magician is murdered in the middle of a lavish party. And a boy who can read minds predicts a rising tide of blood that will wash them all away. The question is, who will survive it?

This story of the French Revolution is a dark, enigmatic fantasy that is at the same time thoroughly grounded in its period. Gardner’s writing is graceful and evocative, but the plot is less successful – it branches off in directions that are abruptly curtailed, relies too heavily on coincidence, under-utilises key characters and leaves too many loose ends for my satisfaction, though the latter may be resolved in the sequel, The Silver Blades.

This week’s story comes from The Japanese Fairy Book, collected by Yei Theodora Ozaki. Many travellers have disappeared on the plain of Adachigahara, and rumour spreads of a terrible goblin that lures the unwary to their deaths. Not unexpectedly, people begin to avoid the spot. One Buddhist pilgrim is unfortunate enough not to get the memo and happens to reach the plain just as the sun is setting. Tired, hungry and cold, he walks for hours before spotting a light through a copse of trees. It belongs to a tumbledown cottage, which in turn belongs to an elderly woman. She sits just inside the door, spinning busily. When appealed to by the pilgrim for a night’s lodging, she reluctantly permits him inside.

After her initial reserve, she becomes very hospitable, ushering her guest solicitously close to the fire and whipping up supper for them both. The pilgrim is delighted at his luck. When the fire begins to die down he offers to go out and fetch more wood, but the old lady insists on doing it herself. Her only requirement is that he stay where he is and not go poking about the house while she’s gone. Whatever else he does, he must not look into the inner room.

Until then he had not even thought of looking in that room, but now of course that’s exactly what he wants to do. For a long time he remains obediently still, but the old lady is away so long that at last he can’t resist. Creeping towards the forbidden room, he pushes the door and peers inside.

Inside is a slaughterhouse. The walls are splashed with blood, the floor heaped with human bones. The smell alone strikes the pilgrim with such force that he faints, and despite his terror, for some time he is in such a state of shock he can’t move. Coming to himself at last, he snatches up his things and pelts out into the night.

He has not gone far when a voice calls out for him to stop. The old lady – or rather, the goblin – is on his trail. “Stop!” she cries. “Stop, you wicked man, why did you look into the forbidden room?” Her moral standards may be a bit skewed. On the kind of adrenaline rush only possible when you are being pursued by a carnivorous monster, the pilgrim powers across the plain, praying frantically, but still she gains. She is close enough now that he can see she is carrying a large, bloody carving knife.

Just when it seems she must finally catch him, the first rays of dawn break across the plain and the goblin disappears. The pilgrim gabbles grateful devotions and sets off for a different part of the country, where it is less probable he will be eaten.

I’ve written before about fairy tales in which husbands butcher their wives, but a female Bluebeard is far less common. It’s worth noting, though, that there is not the same degree of intimacy in her association with the pilgrim, and that the story doesn’t blame him for being fooled. In fact, the plot doesn’t really hold together at all. First she almost refuses him lodging, then she leaves him for ages with the knowledge there’s something hidden in her house. What did she expect to happen? Perhaps she was trying to quit cannibalism and simply could not resist an unsuspecting pilgrim when he arrived on her doorstep. At least she didn’t try to marry him.

Vampirism is a good metaphor for abuse. Vampires, as they are popularly written, are charming and seductive, but they can drain the life out of you. It is in fact a comparison used to describe an unhappy marriage in the 2007BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

Vampires are also a staple element in paranormal fantasy, where they are the blood-drinking undead. Herein lies the conflict: in fantasy, what might otherwise be a metaphor becomes a logical plot point. You don’t need psychiatric treatment, there are actually demons in your house. Your estranged parents really are evil. Your boyfriend is not cheating on you, he’s leading the double life of a superhero. To judge a character accurately, you have to take their context into account, and that context might have only the most tangential relationship to the normal world.

I am not remotely qualified for an in-depth discussion about abusive behaviours symptomatic in popular literature. I am a lifelong reader of speculative fiction who thinks psychological analysis of fantasy can be taken too far.

Yesterday, I encountered twoarticles which break down aspects of Stephenie Meyer’s paranormal romance phenomenon Twilight. I found both well-reasoned, thought-provoking and intelligent. The personal experiences of Ms Mardoll are particularly saddening, and it’s incredibly brave of her to write about them. I can absolutely understand how a book like Twilight might be triggering for her.

But I also disagree with both interpretations. Particularly when Mardoll starts describing Meyer’s readership. Whilst theoretically defending them against the insultingly laughable idea that they all seek abusive relationships, she perpetuates the same idea: this book is bad. People who like it are naïve or in denial.

Longtime readers of this blog will know I’ve talked about my feelings on this subject before, and will realise how annoyed I am now. I like Twilight. I wouldn’t count it as an all-time favourite, but I really enjoyed all four books and was interested enough to locate the draft of Midnight Sun, a reworking of the first book told from Edward’s perspective, posted by Meyer online. Watching the movies introduced me to the music of Linkin Park and Paramore. I have good feelings for Twilight.

I’m also fed up to the back teeth with having to defend myself for that, but as I can, I will. So let’s analyse this series from the angle I see it. Be warned, it will take a while.

Edward Cullen is incredibly fast and strong. He can read minds, even the minds of other vampires, allowing him to glimpse the future through his adoptive sister Alice, which makes him virtually omnipresent. He has been alive for almost a century and has good odds at outlasting modern civilisation as we know it. He has occupied that time by collecting languages like he collects CDs, learning an instrument and going through high school so many times that it’s become a mindless chore. Oh, also, he’s going to remain a stunningly attractive seventeen year old FOREVER.

This is because he is a vampire.

On the flipside, the only interactions he has with human beings are based around maintaining the deception that he’s one of them, he lives with an adoptive family of superpowered recovering blood addicts, and is convinced God hates him. This is the context for his character. How do you expect him to behave?

Like a mind-blowingly arrogant jerk, actually. He’s thoughtless, immature and stuck in an unnaturally extended adolescence, accustomed to thinking he’s better than everyone else (because, superpowers) and that his judgement is infallible (because, omnipresence).

He’s not alone, either. All Meyer’s vampires behave this way. They are carnivorous gods in a world of oblivious mortals; it would be weird if they didn’t. Edward is a different species to Bella, with the alien cultural rules that implies. His first reaction on meeting her is to think: how odd, why can’t I read her mind? The next is: BLOOD. Edward spends the first class of their acquaintance fighting the urge to rip her throat out. He manages to resist, but it’s a close thing. When the situation is explained to them, as seen in Midnight Sun, his family are concerned, not outraged. They are literally a drug addict’s recovery group (Edward describes the lure of blood as being like a heroin addiction), offering ways for him to avoid falling off the wagon but accepting it’s a very real possibility that he might.

Because they are vampires. Even relatively nice vampires have questionable consciences when it comes to human lives. By the standard of his contemporaries, it would be perfectly natural for Edward to abduct, murder and devour Bella within minutes of meeting her. Raised by his pacifistic mentor Carlisle, Edward doesn’t want to do that – but at the same time, he really does.

This does not make it an okay thing. It’s a really, really awful thing! It’s also not a metaphor. To be a vampire means drinking blood; in Meyer’s world, at least, there is no opting out.

This may be the first time in decades that Edward has been confused. He doesn’t handle it well. He convinces himself not to kill Bella, but between her inexplicable unreadability, her mouthwatering scent and the amazing bad luck that dogs her everywhere, he becomes obsessive. His actions are, undeniably, stalkerish and unacceptable. Does it make sense, within his context? I think it does. Edward has a rigid personality. He’s overprotective, judgemental, paternalistic, and completely out of his comfort zone in the modern human world. If Bella finds it hard to relate to people, Edward takes introversion to extraordinary lengths.

Still, being in an unusually enlightened position of knowing just how dangerous the world can be, Edward appoints himself as Bella’s unlikely guardian angel. Is it an excuse to justify the stalking to himself? Probably. Is it useful? Hell, yes. Bella is often in danger. From Edward’s perspective, she is as ephemeral as a butterfly. In consequence, once he decides to risk getting to know her, he wants to know EVERYTHING. She’s the first person he’s had to question in about a century, it’s a bit exciting. He goes absurdly overboard.

As for Bella, he’s this hot supernatural mystery man who frets about her safety and likes the same music. He’s intelligent, generous to a fault, capable and willing to defend her from all harm. She gets on brilliantly with most of his family. Best of all, she could become a superpowered goddess too! She doesn’t actually like being clumsy and disaster-prone; it’s Edward who finds that endearingly unusual. Bella wants to be strong. She wants to be a vampire.

Some people, carrying the Mary Sue metaphor to an extreme, have labelled Bella as religious just because Stephenie Meyer is. They are wrong. Bella is a vague agnostic; she finds magic easier to believe in than hell. Edward is the religious one, and given that he was born in America in 1901, this should not be too surprising.

At the prospect of Bella turning into one of the damned undead, like himself, Edward falls into a flailing mess. He chooses to pretend he was never in love with her at all, hoping she’ll hate him so much she’ll be glad he’s out of her life. Not content with dragging his family away from their home as part of his stupid plan, he then traumatises them by attempting suicide the only way a vampire can, by picking a fight with vampirical law enforcement. He gets it wrong in every single way he could, and goes on getting it wrong when he gets his relationship back together, first by trying to stop Bella seeing her werewolf friends, then by trying to make her abort their baby.

In no possible way are either of those things okay.

It’s important to remember, though, that in both of the latter situations Bella is essentially courting suicide. Teenage werewolves are notoriously volatile, and the most probable explanation for her impossible pregnancy and its unnaturally swift progression is that she’s carrying a monster for which her human body is completely unprepared. Edward, who has lived in the supernatural world a whole lot longer than her, has a set of cast-iron preconceptions that require systematic dismantling before he can believe this thing is not going to kill her. This is a world of extremes. Ordinary human problems, like messy break-ups and unplanned pregnancies, have a tendency to snowball into a carnival of death.

So Bella, who understands that but is willing to take the risk, recruits assistance from her support network to get her through the pregnancy. Edward was right; to all intents and purposes, it does kill her. Edward was wrong; by getting the timing just so, Bella keeps both her baby and her life. She takes that final step she’s been dreaming of pretty much since she met him and becomes a vampire herself.

In Breaking Dawn she’s finally Edward’s physical equal, capable of defending herself against pretty much anything the world has to throw at her. Oh, and she has to fight off an army who come to kill her baby, because disaster follows Bella everywhere. Edward, in his turn, has to learn to trust her, even when her decision-making seems counter-intuitive to him. Time and time again he is struck by the staggering realisation that he is not always right. He has to learn to negotiate, to debate things, to change his mind. He has to grow up.

Did Meyer have to write her vampires this way? No, of course not. Is Edward challenged enough for crossing Bella’s boundaries? Again, I’d say no. Do these negative elements cancel out the positive ones? I don’t believe so.

Analysing problematic aspects in any type of media is valuable. I do it myself with every review I write. Books such as Laurell K. Hamilton’s ‘Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter’ series and A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness contain comparable characters – immensely powerful vampires each seeking to control his human love interest, including stalking, drugging and physically threatening her – and I’ve discussed elsewhere how uncomfortable those characters make me.

I feel differently about Twilight. In part that’s because Bella is a slightly directionless teenager, not a grown woman with pre-existing plans for her life – becoming a vampire is a reasoned decision that she makes for herself, not something forced on her by Edward. Quite the opposite, actually. When she really cares about something, she does it regardless of what he thinks (i.e. reconnecting with the werewolves, keeping the baby, maintaining communication with her father even after her transformation). It’s also important to me that he can’t use at least one of his powers on her, and by the end of Breaking Dawn, he has no physical or supernatural advantage over her at all. By then an isolated, insecure girl has developed into a confident, capable woman with a husband who loves, admires and trusts her, and a network of good friends.

I get something very positive out of this story. I understand that not everyone will. Discussing different interpretations of a book is every reader’s right.

But that’s not what’s happening with Twilight. An immensely popular series has been critically degraded to the point where the readers who love it are ridiculed by people who should know better and vastly insulting assumptions are made about them as a result.

The articles that kicked all this off were not, I am sure, intended to be a part of that. They are considered arguments from people who have actually read the books, an approach I appreciate and respect. What I feel both writers failed to do was take into account the fantastical elements of the story, and the ways in which that might affect resulting interactions. They are judging Edward as a human teenager, and he’s not. That doesn’t justify inappropriate behaviour, but it does go some way towards explaining it, and I think most readers instinctively recognise that, particularly pre-existing fans of speculative fiction.

I’m not saying the writer of either article is wrong, either. Everyone who reads a book will get something different out of it. I, for instance, am not a huge fan of William Shakespeare. I find it difficult to see past the misogyny and historical inaccuracies. Charles Dickens is a bit too flowery for my taste. That doesn’t mean I can’t see the immense skill that went into their work, or accept that other people love them in a way I do not.

But of course, they are men. They are classics. It’s much easier to dismiss a woman, a modern writer yet to develop that patina of respectability that only time can provide; it’s easy to belittle a fantasy series about a teenage girl in love. I imagine that a great many people will be outraged by my making the comparison at all. To which I want to say: no one is making you read what’s popular now. No one is taking the classics away – in fact, the authors I refer to are very much respected by modern audiences, if the number of large-scale theatre productions and BBC dramas are anything to go by. But the story you need will not necessarily be the story someone else needs. And their need is every bit as important as yours. If you don’t like the book, for pity’s sake, just put it down.

For those who find Twilight genuinely troubling, it is your right to feel that way, and to talk about it. That’s healthy. But don’t run down other people for not seeing the same thing you did and feeling the same way. It’s unkind and unhelpful. And it’s my right to say so.